A European Journey through Life and Change How to tell a story? Technologies of telling a story

Comenius – an adventure through time and space What is the aim we are following? We want to manufacture an e-book which shows the technical development and which describes a journey through life and European countries

With whom are we working? We are working with 9 different countries

How do we pattern the change? We invent a story of nine children who travel through the countries

How will the story be told? The story will be told in chapters. The chapters will show the technical changes. This means the first chapter is told in writing and drawing, the second in pictures like comic, the third in photos like a photo story…

1. Handwriting and Drawing Jil and Alina, January 2013

Poland: Writing and Drawing At our first meeting in Poland we learned how to do old writing to design the first chapter. A real professional teacher showed us how to do it: we used ink, a quill and papers and wrote the whole first chapter down.

Our results:

Drawing What about drawing? On the last page you could see some pictures next to the writing as well. For spotting how to do the drawing in the pictures we first tried to draw some transports differently. On the next pages you can see the instruction how to draw in different ways and what we liked about it or disliked.

The original photo

Hand Drawing At first we made a drawing of the photo with the help of a pencil and so made it bigger.

The advantage of a copy is that you can draw the picture bigger or smaller. That is not possible when using other methods. Another advantage is that you are able to leave out irrelevant details and you can decide according to your own opinion what the picture looks like in the end. Indeed a certain skill in drawing is necessary. It is also necessary to observe well and to look exactly at something. The disadvantage of this method is to watch the original photo closely in its totality and to draw it as exactly as possible without changing the proportions. Vagueness could occur and change the picture what you hadn't wanted.

Tracing Paper Then we tried the method of using a tracing paper.

When using this method we put tracing paper on the original photo and we marked the contours of the most important parts with the help of a line. So a rather exact drawing of contours is produced and the original photo is copied. The advantages of this method are that you can copy the original without changing proportions. So you can turn away your concentrated look because you only need to draw the lines with the help of a pencil without observing the totality of the picture. But there are also certain disadvantages, for example, you cannot change the size and you can only draw contours. Details or shadows have to be left out

Shadows In order to avoid those disadvantages, we tried another method where you also draw with the help of tracing paper. But this time no contours but light and shadow are emphasized with the help of a pencil and so highlighted.

The result is that not only contours are drawn but also interesting shadows that mark the size of the original photo. So we painted dark shadows in black and light ones in grey. A disadvantage is that certain details can't be taken over and the size cannot be changed. Our group decided that this method is the more interesting and better one.

Raster The fifth and last method was the “raster” method where you draw on ordinary paper.

When using this method you divide the original or the model into squares (“rasters”). On another piece of paper you draw the same number of squares either in the original size or enlarged. With the help of the lines and the “grid squares” you can copy the motif in a rather exact way. According to our experiences it is a very lengthy method that has to be carried out with a lot of accuracy and care.

You need things like a ruler, a set square, an eraser and a sharpened pencil for help. An important advantage is that you can change the original photo or picture in any way you like. With the help of this method you can, for example, paint the whole front of a house. It is also easier to define the proportions. Our group, however, evaluated this method more negatively, because on the whole it is a rather impractical method.